Saturday, December 21, 2013

Vehicles!

Whether it’s the Batmobile, the Quinjet, the Blackbird, or the
Fantasticar, vehicles are a big part of the world of comics. Vehicles are
designed like any other Gadget.

A vehicle must have a STR to represent its
carrying capacity and a BODY. If the player wishes the vehicle to be immune to
the 1 AP Hole rule, then he should get Hardened Defenses, unless the vehicle is
a bike or other type too small to worry about it.

Vehicles also require a movement power that
represents how and how fast they can get around. Skin Armor is used for armor;
Force Field for defensive energy shields; Sealed Systems for environment
(including artificial gravity in a starship); Radar Sense (including Lidar for
science fiction vessels and devices) and Sonar for sensors (other, more
detailed sensory powers are possible if the GM desires); Invisibility or Thief
(Stealth) for cloaking devices and stealth technology; Radio Communications for
comm devices; Area Knowledge for GPS devices; Vehicles skill for autopilots;
and mental attributes and Recall for onboard computers. That covers all the basic
abilities of vehicles, but in comics, vehicles frequently have more and
stranger traits. These can be represented with powers.

The weapons of a vehicle are designed
separately and considered to be attached to a vehicle.All vehicle powers, including weaponry, are
operated by the Vehicles skill. The AV is almost always the pilot’s or
operator’s APs of skill, with the EV being the vehicles APs of power. For
example, piloting a vehicle through a dangerous asteroid field, firing the
phasers of a starship, or using the sonar or a submarine to locate an enemy
vessel all rely on a character’s skill. If a power usually has an AV and is a
part of a vehicle’s systems where the user’s skill is the AV, then that power
should be purchased with the No AV limitation.

Large vehicles such as naval vessels and
starships are called Capital Ships.
A Capital Ship is essentially a mobile Headquarters. If much of the action of
the campaign is to take place aboard a Capital Ship it is a better approach to
design each important area aboard the vehicle (bridge, sickbay, flight deck,
holodeck, bio-labs, etc) as a setting with greater detail for that area’s
specific attributes and powers.

For example, a sick bay may have the Medicine
skill, X-Ray Vision, Life Sense, and Microscopic Vision while the bridge would
have the vehicle’s movement power, comm system, and sensors (the normal set of
powers for a vehicle) because that is where the control stations for those
abilities are located. This is done to prevent complicated Capital Vehicles
from having dozens of powers representing a myriad of functions. This is
appropriate for campaigns such as Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica where the
ship is in essence a mobile setting. For campaigns like Star Wars, where the
ships are far less detailed and important, a regular write up is probably
sufficient.

When a vehicle crashes, treat it as a Charge
Attack on whatever the nearest obstacles are. The passengers inside a vehicle
are attacked by the same AV/EV as the vehicle.

Mecha: Giant robots are a staple
of modern comics and anime. They are a mixture of vehicle and powered armor.
Design the mecha as a suit of powered armor with Hardened Defenses (see the
armor section for rules on designing power armor). The mecha’s DEX, STR,
and BODY are all italicized. Most
mecha are humanoid and make use of the pilot’s physical abilities. Thus, the
character uses his Acrobatics, Martial Arts, and Weaponry to operate the mecha.
However, those skills have a limit on them: the character cannot use more APs
of those skills than he has in Vehicles (Mecha). For example, if he had a
Martial Artist of 10 and a Vehicles of 5, then the most APs he could use in the
mecha would be 5 APs.

Mecha usually offers full protection to its
operator. Occasionally, it does not, leaving the operator partially exposed. In
this case, the mecha should have an Attack Vulnerability against targeting the
appropriate area of the mecha.

Mecha generally use huge versions of normal
melee and ranged weapons. To convert a normal sized weapon to a Mecha sized
weapon, add +2 APs to the weapon’s BODY and attack power. If creating an original
mecha sized weapon, feel free to give it any APs you wish.

Mecha that are not humanoid, like AT-ATs or
fuchikoma, are designed like normal vehicles.

Mecha that transform, like the Veritech
fighters of Robotech, or are composed of multiple mecha that combine into one,
like Voltron, should be created using the Alter Ego (Controllable) rules, with
the primary form being treated as the superhero identity.

The R# of a mecha
represents both its charge and mechanical reliability. The first failed
reliability roll in a game session indicates that the mecha has run out of
power and needs to be recharged. The second failed roll indicates that is has
malufunction and needs to be repaired. When a mecha is out of charge, it is
immobile and useless except for the italicized BODY.

FASTER-THAN-LIGHT MOVEMENT

In comic books, vehicles frequently travel
faster than the speed of light. This is called Faster-Than-Light (FTL for
short). FTL speed is any speed over 29 APs. There are two common ways to
accomplish FTL speed: Jump Drives and Warp Drives. To use any form of FTL speed
a ship must be out of a planet’s gravitational pull. FTL speed is not possible
in an atmosphere or in an orbit. It is also not possible in the midst of any
space phenomena (see below). The GM should decide which form or forms of FTL
travel are possible in the setting, if any.

If no FTL is possible, then either movement
powers cap out at 28 APs or for every AP over 28, the character behaves as if
he possessed the Time Travel power at a number of APs equal to the APs of
movement -28.

The Jump Drive allows a ship to jump
through an alternate dimension, usually hyperspace, and immediately arrive at
another location. In some cases, it creates a wormhole or gravity well. In the
works of Isaac Asimov the ships had Jump Drives that allowed them to teleport
from one location to another through Hyperspace. This also occurs in the new Battlestar Galactica, Event Horizon,
and in the popular game Battletech.

In Frank Herbert’s Dune the ship did not have the power, but the Guild Navigators did.
In this case, space was folded, allowing a stationary cargo ship to be pulled
to another location.

In the television show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and the movie Stargate, the Jump Drive is replaced by a Jump
Gate. It functions in the same way as a Jump Drive, but is external to the
ship and generally stationary.

A
Jump Drive or Gate is represented by the Warp power, with the limitation that
it cannot be used as an attack. The APs of power must be at least 52 in order
to travel one light year.

The Warp Drive is based on the starship
creating a tunnel through an alternate dimension, allowing it to move at FTL
speeds. In Star Trek, the Warp Drive allows a ship to travel
through an alternate dimension called Warp Space. In Star Wars, the warp drive is called a Hyperdrive and it allows the
ship to travel through an alternate dimension called Hyperspace. These are both
examples of a warp drive.

The best way to represent this is through
the Flight power with the Hyperwarp Bonus. Often
the Warp Drive has a Power Burnout to
indicate that it is unusually delicate. When it burns out, the power does not
reduce to 0, but instead to 27.

Suspension is a limitation for many FTL drives. In this
case, the characters within a ship must enter into pods that put them into
suspended animation while the ship travels at FTL velocity. This has been seen
in the Alien franchise and in Event Horizon. This is a -2 FC applied to the vehicle’s movement power
and the ship must possess the Suspension power.